VT College of Science Quarterly August 2014 Vol. 2 No. 1 | Page 21

Mariani receives NSF CAREER Award
Physicist Camillo Mariani
(CAREER) Program offers the
has been named as the recipNational Science Foundaient of a prestigious CAREER
tion’s most prestigious
Award from the National
awards in support of junior
Science Foundation.
faculty who exemplify the
Mariani, an assistant prorole of teacher-scholars
fessor of physics, will receive
through outstanding re$630,000 for his research on
search, excellent education
neutrino interactions in matand the integration of educater. The award also includes
tion and research within the
an educational component
context of the mission of
to create a QuarkNet center
their organizations.
at Virginia Tech to attract
“Camillo’s award recoghigh school teachers and
nizes the nationally and
Camillo Mariani
students, with initial emphasis
internationally ranked caliber
on neutrino physics.
of his research and teaching program in neu“Camillo is a key part of our neutrino physics trino physics,” said Leo Piilonen, the William E.
group,” said Jonathan Link, director of Virginia Hassinger Jr., Senior Faculty Fellow in Physics
Tech’s Center for Neutrino Physics. “The reand chair of the Department of Physics. “We
search and educational programs laid out in
were fortunate to recruit him to Virginia Tech
his proposal will have a significant and positive since he exemplifies the outstanding caliber
impact well beyond Virginia Tech.”
of our faculty, many of whom have garnered
The Faculty Early Career Development
similar early-career awards from the NSF, the

Department of Energy, DARPA, and the Air
Force Office of Scientific Research.”
“Among the key areas of study in particle
physics are precision measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters, the neutrino mass
hierarchy and measurement of CP violation in
the neutrino sector,” Mariani said. “To address
these requires a more detailed understanding, both experimentally and theoretically,
of neutrino interactions in nuclear matter.
The research effort at Virginia Tech is aimed
directly at these questions and is based on a
complementary and holistic approach using
experiment, theory and simulation.”
Virginia Tech’s Center for Neutrino Physics
has grown into one of the largest and most
visible neutrino research groups in the world.
Mariani was the third junior faculty member to
be hired as a part of the Neutrino Initiative and
the third to receive such an award.
Mariani joined Virginia Tech in 2012 after
four years as a postdoctoral research associate at Columbia University. He received his
master’s degree and doctoral degree from the
University of Rome (Italy).

Jeff Jeffries, a member of the College of
Science Roundtable and a friend of the
college, released his book, Kenton Harper
of Virginia: Editor, Citizen, Soldier, during
an event Jan. 23 at the R.R. Smith Center
for History and Art in Staunton. The
book, available in hardback, is 468 pages
and illustrated with photographs and
maps telling the life of Kenton Harper of
Staunton. Harper served in the Mexican
War and was made a general in the Civil
War serving under Thomas J. “Stonewall”
Jackson.

FEBRUARY 2014

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